Page 28

R.I.O.T

" S hould I remind you that you weren't invited here?" My voice remains cool, unbothered. Zander is furious. It's evident when his gaze meets mine, a shine in them that can only mean his wolf isn't going to sit back with his tail between his legs this time.

This time , it involves a Nightwalker.

Alissa whimpers beside my legs, and I can't help but shift my gaze towards her fox. Small and fragile, she's a complete contrast to my previous mates. They had a 'take-no-prisoners' attitude. This one seems like she'd rather hide under her bed and stay there forever.

I didn't know I had reached for her until the softness of her fur runs through my fingers. She lifts her head to mine, her ears pressed back and her green eyes wide, her fear forgotten. Shit.

I grit my teeth and pull away. Alissa whines softly, and I turn and narrow my gaze on the walking temptation with a hunger for blood written across her face and growl low, "What did you do?"

"Well, I haven't killed anyone… yet." She smirks, golden eyes locked onto Zander, daring him. It’s only for a second before Zander moves.

He’s fast, even for a shifter, but to me his movements play out in slow motion. I see every detail; the snarl curling his lips, the blur of motion as he closes the distance.

His hand wraps around Nightmare’s throat and in one fluid motion, he hurls her against the wall. The impact of her skull against the stone is so violent, the crack disturbs something deep and forgotten inside me.

Reece gasps. Seth, Kyrian, and Logan stiffen as I grit my teeth.

This could be a good opportunity to learn what she's capable of. If she's going to kill Damien, she will have to be stronger than him, which means she has to be stronger than the Alpha who's pinning her to the wall.

Nightmare tilts her head, her long white hair catching the light, studying Zander like he’s a problem she’s about to solve before a smile pulls on her lips, slow and deliberate. A thin curve of crimson promising nothing good.

"Ooh." Nightmare pulls her lip between her teeth and catches the attention of every hot-blooded male in the room. "I do enjoy it rough ."

Her words, the pull of her tone—it’s dangerous. She's a walking temptation. A dark seductress. And it’s deadly. And yet, I have this unnatural urge to storm across the room and rip Zander's arm off her—to reserve that tone, that voice, those words for me . Only me.

Even from where I sit, observing, I see the way Zander's body tenses, the realisation dawning on him too late that he misjudged her.

She reaches out, almost tenderly, as her ringed fingers wrap around his wrist that holds her.

I knew then that he was finished, because there is nothing tender about her grip.

Nightmare's hands are small compared to his, delicate even, but when she twists his arm, it’s as if all the strength of a viper's strike is condensed into that one motion.

The crack of cartilage and bone is audible, even from where I sit.

It isn’t a clean sound; it is wet, messy, like something snapping under too much pressure.

Zander's knees buckle immediately, and he collapses in front of her with a gasp of pain; the kind of sound a man makes when he doesn't have the breath to scream.

Nightmare's smile only grows as she leans down, and her voice—low and silken—carries just enough for me to hear her words as her eyes shine gold.

"See how easy that was?" she murmurs. "Now imagine what I could do to you if I really tried."

Zander whimpers as Nightmare continues to squeeze her fingers around his broken joint. Logan quickly leaps into action, racing across the room in a blur of speed. The only indication she saw him is the slight shift of her chin.

Logan barely enters her space before she has him, too. It’s like a dance for her; each movement planned and deliberate, as she takes Logan's arm and flips him onto his back right beside his Alpha, pressing her boots into his neck, pinning him to the floor.

And, as if she can feel me, her eyes connect with mine. There's a challenge in her eyes as her fingers dig deeper into Zander's wrist, and she applies more pressure to Logan's neck, almost as if she's daring me to stop her.

Both men let out a strangled gasp, and I see the way her lips curve—just barely. Not a smile, but something more dangerous, more intimate. The sound of bone grinding against bone carries across the space between us, but it’s muted, almost background noise compared to the electric charge in the air.

Her focus doesn’t waver as the room suddenly melts around us. We don’t spare a glance towards the men at her feet; they are irrelevant now. Her attention is all mine, and it burns.

The heat rises in my chest, crawling up my neck as she leans slightly forward, still holding Zander's shattered wrist and putting her weight on Logan's neck.

The subtle arch of her body as she shifts sends a spark of something low and primal through me.

Her hair spills over her shoulder, white strands gleaming like liquid silver, and I suddenly want to wrap it around my fist just to see if she'd let me.

Her lips part just a fraction, and her tongue flicks out to wet them. It wasn't an accident. Nothing about her ever is. She knows exactly what she is doing, how the air is taut like a wire about to snap. She is toying with me even as she destroys the men beneath her.

“Are you going to do something?” Seth's voice in my head snaps me back to reality. For a moment, I'm speechless.

What the fuck was that?

Nightmare stares back, her face blank for the briefest moment, like she isn't sure what happened just now either, before a smile curves her lips, and she returns her attention to the men struggling and gasping at her feet.

"A pack is only as strong as its Alpha, and you're very weak." A frown pulls on the corner of her lips. "I won't kill you since fighting your pack would be boring and a colossal waste of my time."

Fuck!

I shouldn't have looked. I shouldn't have played into her mind game—I know better—but I couldn't ignore her, either.

There's something about Nightmare that demands my attention.

I noticed it the moment I met her in that clearing, like watching a fire consume everything in its path. Beautiful. Merciless. Absolute.

"What do you say, Beta?" She turns to Logan, her mismatched eyes meeting his. "Truce?"

Logan nods, going purple under the weight of her boot as Nightmare releases them. Zander hits the tiled floor, and I watch him struggle, his limbs trembling under the weight of his failure.

He doesn’t see me move, doesn’t see the whisper of my steps across the room—no one does. When my boot slams down onto the back of his head, the force is absolute.

The sound of his skull meeting the floor is sharp, a crack followed by a grinding that makes the air seem to vibrate.

His face smashes into the stone with a sickening finality, the impact so brutal it leaves a faint red smear on the surface beneath him.

Zander cries out—a strangled, guttural noise muffled by the floor—and his body jerks once, instinctively.

I press down harder, shifting my weight into the motion, feeling the satisfying give of his skull beneath my sole as his head grinds against it. I speak, my words a low growl. "Stay down."

I glance up to see Seth pinning the Beta to the floor with his arm twisted behind his back as Kyrian stands over the Beta's head with his sharp silver blade pressed to his neck in warning. Both men turn to me with raised brows, waiting for my order. "They can't know about the Nightwalker."

Zander would definitely run to the Supreme Court the second he leaves here; it would give him more authority, and he isn't the type of man to give that shit up.

Zander whimpers, saying words I don’t—or don’t bother—to understand, as his hands flail weakly against the floor, fingers scrabbling for purchase. I can feel his fragile skull beneath my boot, the faintest quiver as he tries, just barely, to lift his head against the weight of me.

Seth frowns, rubbing his chin in deep thought. "We can call Nelle or Mammon, curse their tongues and bind the secret to their hearts."

That would be a great solution if it didn't carry a heavy cost. A curse, however small and insignificant, requires a sacrifice. A death. A soul. Something that can't be replaced. Something unique.

"Absolutely not!" Reece snaps, her green eyes alight and daring anyone to say otherwise. I sigh, turn to Seth and shrug. Reece glances at Mia. "Any suggestions?"

Mia shrugs. "Only temporary solutions that won’t last long."

"I can take the memory," Nightmare offers, and my gaze snaps to hers. She’s sitting on the couch, her legs crossed, and her arms spread over the back. I twist my foot further into Zander's skull at the sight of her.

He hurt her.

She never made a sound, never gasped or cried out. She brushed it off as if nothing happened, but I know she felt it. I know it hurt her.

"Like a temporary amnesia?" Kyrian wonders, tilting his head.

"No," she scoffs, "I mean, take it… Forever. As if it had never happened to begin with."

I narrow my gaze at her. "Why would you help us?"

She looks at me as if the answer is obvious and simply says, "I can't exactly kill all of you if the Supreme Court gets involved, now can I?"

She slides off the couch. Her movements are slow, almost languid, as she approaches Logan first. She's rolled her sleeves up, showcasing the intricate tattoos that curl and twist like living art from her wrist to her elbow, climbing up behind her ear, along her hairline and connecting at her forehead. But as she raises her hand, the patterns come alive, glowing with an ethereal green light. It isn’t just a glow; it shimmers, moving like liquid fire beneath her skin, the designs shifting subtly, almost imperceptibly, as if the magic itself is alive and restless.

The light is mesmerising. It bathes her in a soft, almost divine glow, illuminating her features in a way that makes her seem otherworldly, untouchable. Warmth radiates from her, or at least the illusion of it.

It’s beautiful— too beautiful, in fact. The kind of beauty that makes you forget, just for a moment, that danger is a breath away. Everyone watches her with the same expression of awe written across their faces. Zander and Logan have even stopped struggling as she approaches them.

But I see her.

Beneath the light, there is something darker.

The tattoos aren’t just marks of power. They are conduits; channels carved into her very flesh for something far more sinister.

When the green light flares, I catch glimpses of it; a shadow, oily and black, curling at the edges of the glow.

It twists and writhes, coiling around her arm like a serpent, its tendrils barely visible but unmistakable.

My gaze darkens as her hand hovers just above Logan's temples.

Kyrian and Seth stumble away from her. Logan turns, entranced by her as her fingers finally make contact, pressing lightly against Logan's temples, and the moment they do, his body spasms violently, his back arching off the ground as a silent scream tears from his throat.

His face, once flush with heat and strength, drains of colour in an instant, his skin turning ashen and waxy.

Veins darken beneath the surface, jagged black lightning streaks branching out from beneath her fingers and spreading like cracks in fragile glass.

I can see it taking, taking, taking, as his eyes roll into the back of his head, and his body frozen in a state of shock, his spine curved unnaturally, the veins in his neck now pulsing and threatening to jump right out of his skin.

She pulls away as Logan begins to slacken, his spasms growing weaker until he is more like a limp, hollow shell.

The awe on everyone's faces turns to horror as she tilts her head towards Zander, the motion almost birdlike.

And I see it: her eyes are entirely black, deep and empty with only two golden rings at the centre, small and faint, like they are being swallowed up by the darkness.

She rises fluidly, her movements impossibly smooth, the edges of herform blurring in the low light. She doesn’t walk towards Zander so much as glides, her body swaying like smoke caught in the unseen wind.

I step back, watching her intently, but she doesn't see me. I didn't realise how deeply that fact would disturb me until this exact second.

She doesn't see me.

Zander scurries away from her, crying pathetically. And suddenly, she is on him, moving like a wraith, silent and inevitable. Her fingers hadn't even touched him before his body spasmed, but the light had.

She is a masterpiece of contradictions: radiant yet terrifying, divine yet damned. Watching her is like staring into the sun, knowing it will burn you yet unable to look away.

"Something’s wrong," Mia voices, brows drawn together. "Why isn't she stopping?"

I snap my gaze back to Nightmare, her fingers still attached to Zander. Mia is right; it hadn't taken her long to take Logan's memories of the last hour.

Just as an uneasy feeling surfaces in my gut, Nightmare tilts her head. A smile curves her lips, but there is nothing warm about it. It’s cold, hollow and dead, just like her voice when she says, "Perhaps slaughtering your pack won't be so boring, after all."

Her tattoos return to their normal state, and it dawns on me what she means to do.

It happens in an instant; memories assault me of her hand wrapped around Leila's heart before I realised either woman had moved.

The guilt of my failure presses down on me, the cries of her father haunt me, the devastation her death brought and the memories the actions had trudged up force me to act.

The tether binding her to me hums faintly in the back of my mind. It weaves through her body and attaches itself to every nerve, muscle and bone. Through it, I feel her presence like a shadow that’s never left me.

I focus on the tether, reaching out instinctively, my movements rushed and almost desperate—and tug. So hard, so violently, her body jerks, her spine arching painfully. I hadn't realised how many of my emotions I had poured into the action until her body went limp.

Her knees crack into the tiled floor, a sound so sickeningly disturbing, I flinch— fucking flinched —and before I know it, I'm standing over her, cradling her head in my hands before she can hit the ground.

Fuck.